CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY
AND WAR
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY
AND WAR
CONTENTS.
I. PEACE PRATTLE AND WAR PREPARATIONS - -
II. FRESH Woops AND PASTURES NEW - - - - 4
The Changed Face - - - - - - 4
Buildings - - - - - - - - 5
University Men Lead the Armies - - - - 5
The University Focuses its Brains on War - - 7
Cambridge Science - - - - - - 8
Cambridge Brains and War Business - - - 12
Morale - - - - - - - - - 13
III. THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND AND TALK - - 13
Infiuence or Instinct? - - - - - - 14
Ministers of Morale - - - - - - 15
Blessed are the Peacemakers - - - - 16
| Cambridge must Protect Culture from the Huns - 17
| Academic Experiments in Pacifist Baiting - - 19
| IV. Die WaAcHT AM Cam, 1914 - - - - - 20
The Precipice of the Pinnacled Mind - - ~ 21
Our Practical Senate - = - - - - 22
| A Plan of Action Two Years Old - - - - 24
V. PERPETUATING THE FOLLY—CAMBRIDGE TO-DAY - 25
Indifference Even Now - - - - - - 25
The Officers’ Training Corps - - - - - 26
The Air Squadron - - - - - - - 27
Research > - - - - - - - 27
VI. WHAT IS TO BE DONE? - -= - - - - 33
What did They Do? - - - - - - 33
What Did They Achieve ? = > - - - 41
How Did They Fail? - - - - - - 4l
Act Here and Now - - - - - - 42
(In all quotations in the following pages, the words in italic
type are emphasised by ourselves, for the purposes of the pamphlet,
and not by the authors of the writings or speeches quoted.) :
=
I. PEACE PRATTLE AND WAR PREPARA-
TIONS.
“I AM not one of those people—a small minority, I believe—who
affirm that the misery and bloodshed of this war is the direct
consequence of our sins. Given German arrogance, German
treachery and German ruthlessness, bloodshed and horror must
needs be. But is it not certain that the bloodshed and the horror
need not have been so great. . . if considerations of party politics
had not prevented reasonable preparations being made for the
threatened struggle? Surely a large majority of any assembly of
600 or 700 men, even though they were chosen almost haphazard,
if they had been made acquainted a year before the war with those
indications of the coming storm, which have become public know-
ledge since the war began, would have recognised the futility of
crying peace, peace, peace when there was no peace.”
(R. H. Kennet, D.D., in the University Sermon,
Nov. 12th, 1916.)
THERE WAS NO PEACE IN 1912, 1913 and 1914, but in those
years peace was cried aloud throughout the University. Political
societies discussed the problem of peace, special peace societies
were formed, discussion followed discussion on the furtherance of
peace—the Union debated it—the clergy preached it—but while
controversy continued—-while words and phrases succeeded one
another, while posters filled the College screens—-war was being
prepared. The well-meaning sections of the University were
interrupted in their cries of peace by England’s declaration
of war on August 4th, 1914.
There is no peace to-day! But there are more peace societies
in Cambridge than in any other university. Political societies
discuss the problem of peace—special peace societies are formed—
the Christian Peace Society, the New Peace Movement, the Anti-
War Movement discuss, debate the causes and the cures of war ;
their posters fill the College screens; eminent men lecture to
attentive audiences; eminent professors pledge themselves to
peace—but while we are crying peace, war is being increasingly
prepared.
And it is being prepared in other places than the munition
factories—it takes more than bombs and aeroplanes to wage a
war. Weapons must be designed—armies must be led—the War _
Office and the Admiralty must be fully staffed with capable
3
organisers—and active propagandists must be found, for the
Government owed the rapid recruitment in 1914 to no one more
than to its loyal servant, the Press.
The chief source of all these elements that are so necessary to the
successful carrying-on of a war—officers, technicians, interpreters,
scientists, intelligence service, chaplains, financial advisers, spies
and propagandists, the factories where they are carefully turned
out and prepared by mass production, are the Universities of
England. And for the Great War of 1914-1918, as is gratefully
admitted by the Royal Commission, there were no more efficient
factories than Oxford and Cambridge.
‘*Brains, rather than arms, have been the determining
factor in the Great War. Every kind of special knowledge and
every type of trained intelligence have been mobilised in counter-
ing the enemy’s devices, inventing means of extending the offensive
and in strengthening our position both at home and abroad... .
Probably one of the chief gains of the country from the war will
be the discovery that was then made of the value of men with
University training for all departments of national service.
Cambridge, like the other Universities, gave her all.’’
(British Empire Universities Handbook, 1913-1920,
Appendix, "The University and War.’’)
II. FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW.
THE CHANGED FACE.
“Cambridge has opened the new academical year with a good
deal more of the aspect of a garrison town than that of a Univer-
sity. Instead of rushing off to the playing fields or the river
after lectures, for football or boating, men are betaking them-
selves daily to the drill-ground for a three-hours’ hard grind
in military training under the direction of the O.T.C. and then
sacrifice part of their evening in military lectures.”
(Observer, Oct. 18th, 1914.)
In October, 1914, the purpose of the University as a place for
education, for the study of peace and other ‘‘abstract’”’ subjects,
had been quite forgotten. Cambridge had been swiftly and
smoothly converted into a tool for another purpose.
BUILDINGS.
As time went on a greater and greater proportion of the
University buildings were handed over without hesitation for
recruiting agencies, soldiers’ lodgings and other war offices;
some were commandeered, others voluntarily handed over by the
authorities themselves.
“The Lent Term opened at Cambridge under circumstances
even more abnormal than those with which the Michaelmas Term
was begun. . .. The soldiers commenced to arrive during the
Christmas week, their numbers being continuously augmented
until the place is full of them. . . . The whole of Whewell’s
Court, Trinity, is occupied by the rank and file, and nearly all the
Colleges have set apart rooms for the use of soldiers and reading,
writing and conversation rooms. . . . The life of Cambridge has
been so transformed by this peaceful invasion that the place
hardly knows itself.”
(Observer, Jan. 10th, 1915.)
During the war part of the biochemical, engineering and
Cavendish laboratories were commandeered for the billeting of
troops. The Examination Hall was used first as the Headquarters
of the Cambridge Civilian Dnll and Shooting Club, and then as
a mess-room. There was an end of rowing for a time, because
all the boathouses were commandeered for the soldiers. Pembroke’s
Old Library became a war office. New features of economic life,
a result of the country’s loss of its regular skilled workers, also
made their demands on College buildings. Thus during the
Easter vacation, 1917, Girton College was used by girls from the
Eastern Counties, who were being trained for the women’s land-
service movement at the University School of Agriculture.
No one resisted the abnormal uses which were found for the
College buildings. On the contrary, the authorities vied with
each other for the honour of accommodating the forces of war in
the precincts of the University. The single instance of resistance
which we can note is the mild objection of the Clare Fellows to
the transformation of their garden into a rifle-range !
UNIVERSITY MEN LEAD THE ARMIES.
It is true that the war might have been waged without the
use of the University buildings. But, as the Government
admitted, it would have been much more difficult to carry on the
war efficiently without the services of the University men—
5
especially at the beginning. The Government recognised in its
University staff and students a very special and perfect weapon,
a weapon ready-made; both as an army leadership and as a
technical staff. This is what the Royal Commission has to say:
‘*The value of the gift which the Universities had to offer
was enhanced by the fact that in the early days of the war,
when there was a great dearth of men qualified to take
commissions, Oxford and Cambridge were in a position to
give the country a peculiarly large number of men gifted
to act as officers, by their education, their upbringing, and
in many cases their experience in the Officers’ Training
Corps.’’
In October, 1914, Dr. James, the Vice-Chancellor, proudly
boasts of University enlistment up to date:
“The University has contributed a worthy share of her sons to
champion the cause. Nearly 2,000 applicants for commissions
from our younger graduates and our undergraduates have passed
through the hands of the indefatigable Committee of the Board
of Military Studies; and this number does not include the very
large contingent who have applied through other bodies, those
who already held commissions at the outbreak of war, those who
have enlisted in the various branches of the service (among whom
we give special thought to the gallant crew of the Cambridge ship
the Zarephah).”’
But the best illustration of the effectiveness of recruiting among
students, of the completeness of the process by which the Uni-
versity was swallowed into the battlefront itself, is the statistical
account of the University residents, 1914-18, and of the numbers
killed in action.
The following were in residence from 1913-1918 (Cambridge
Review figures) :
Oct. 1913 - 3,263
Lent 1914 - 3,181
Oct. 1914 - 1,658
Oct. 1915 - 825
Oct. 1916 - 444
Oct. 1917 - 398
Jan. 1918 - 408
The Cambridge University Reporter (March 7th, 1916) gives facts
about 294 out of 301 graduates who obtained appointments in
1914.
6
146 joined the Army or Navy.
42 went into manufacture or business directly connected with
war supplies.
6 were employed in Government work connected with the war.
1 was interned in Germany.
61 were employed abroad by the Colonial and India Offices
and other Government Offices.
8 were abroad in other capacities.
6 were known to have attested.
14 were above military age or ineligible.
10 probably ineligible, went into scholastic or educational
work.
In the Cambridge Review, Feb. 7th, 1917, the following figures
are given:
Total numbers on service - 13228
Killed - ~ - - 1438
Wounded - - - - 1980
Missing - - - -~ 210
Direct military operations all but emptied the University and
also penetrated what little life remained there. The O.T.C. trained
and drilled at fever-heat throughout the war. The seniority and
dignity of University authorities such as the Master of Downing
did not prevent them from setting a good example to the younger
men by attending drill. The Windsor Magazine (1915) reports:
“Time tables were given of activities in Cambridge, and showed
quite clearly that from 2 o’clock onwards military duties were the
only thing. In Oxford it had spread into the mornings. Similar
conditions prevailed in the other Universities.”
THE UNIVERSITY FOCUSES ITS BRAINS ON WAR.
The Great War was fought not only at the front. The
sophisticated horrors of modern war technique were evolved in
offices, studies, laboratories, with pen and paper, with scientific
apparatus ; they were the child of the trained and expert mind.
The Government repeatedly emphasised that the administrative
and technical assistance of the University was just as indispensable
as its supply of officers. In the words of the Royal Commission
on Oxford and Cambridge Universities :
“Few even of those best acquainted with the various studies
of the Universities had realised how large a part the staff and
young graduates would be called upon to play in the many
7
ee
(Se ee - =
auxiliary departments which were set up for administration or
the solution of special problems. The Universities of Great
Britain from the very beginning were almost depleted not only
for the fighting but for the thinking services of the Crown.”
CAMBRIDGE SCIENCE.
Cambridge is the home of British Science; and one might
have thought that the Cambridge scientists, or some of them at
least, would have stood their ground against the general inrush
and ferment of propaganda, and would have ignored an appeal
whose foundations were not built up of scientific facts or necessi-
ties. But in Nature, the official scientific organ, Cambridge policy
is held up to all other scientists as an example.
“Action is being taken by the Master of Christ’s College, Cam-
bridge, and the Secretary of the Appointments Board of the
University, to form a Committee of members of the University
to advise the ‘Entente Trade League.’ Here is an effort in the
right direction; but it cannot be too strongly emphasised that
WE ARE AT WAR, and the first duty of all men of science must
be to organise, and to place their services unreservedly at the
disposal of the War Office. We cannot all be soldiers, but we
can all help, we men of science, in securing victory for the
Allied armies.”
(Nature, October 29th, 1914, Editorial, ‘Science and the
State.”’)
For science, as for other University work, War was now the End,
and all its efforts were the Means.
At first the nature of the researches and expert work carried
out in the Jaboratories was kept secret. A few general state-
ments were published, but that is all. In the Cambridge Univer-
sity Reporter, 1916, laboratory researches are reported in the
following brief form :
“Mechanism and Applied Mechanics. All the members except
two were engaged in Government work.
“Biochemistry. A good deal of research work was done, and
early in the year an investigation was carried out on behalf of a
branch of the Ministry of Munitions.
“Chemistry. The staff and research students of the laboratory
devoted themselves to original work of an emergency kind for
various Government departments. The whole of this work is
8
confidential in character, and consequently practically no original
work has been published from the laboratory.
“But soon after the war, accounts were published which do full
justice to the variety and significance of the war research carried
on in the Cambridge laboratories, or by Cambridge staff com-
mandeered from the laboratories for special research.
The British Empire Universities Yearbook (1918-20) gives detailed
information as follows :
“ Engineering Laboratory.
“Very soon after the war began, the late professor and two
members of the teaching staff joined the Staff at Chatham, and
took part in the training of Royal Engineer officers. After a
short time the workshop staff and several others were engaged
in the manufacture of apparatus and the carrying out for the
Admiralty of a long series of tests, under the direction of the late
professor in connection with the protection of ships from the effects
of high explosives. (When the work was satisfactorily completed
a certain amount of experimental apparatus was designed and
manufactured for the Royal Aircraft Factory and other Govern-
ment establishments.) By this time all the younger members
of the teaching staff were engaged in military and naval duties
elsewhere, and those who were left proceeded to develop in the
workshops the manufacture of gauges. From this, the workshops,
with a staff augmented by several senior members of the Univer-
sity and others, took up the manufacture of shells, and this was
continued right up to the time of the Armistice.
‘Members of the teaching staff and former members of the
Department figured prominently in many of the scientific activities
of the Government Departments during the war, as well as in the
field. The nucleus of the staff at the R.F.C. Experimental Station
at Orfordness consisted almost entirely of Cambridge-trained engineers.
“A considerable proportion of the new bridging material of
the R.E. which played an important part in the final stages of the
war was designed by, and manufactured under the supervision
of, a member of the teaching staff. Former students of the Depart-
ment were associated with the design of the tanks, and one of these
was responsible for the design of the engines for the tanks. Several
former students joined the staffs of the Royal Aircraft Factory
and of the Air Ministry, whilst another figured prominently in
connexion with wireless telegraphy at Woolwich.
9
“ Cavendish Laboratory.
“The work done in connexion with the war by the staff and
research workers was carried on both in the Cavendish itself, and
in the various laboratories established by the Government to
develop the applications of science to the needs of the Navy, Army
and Air Force. At the Cavendish it included the investigation
of methods of signalling to and from the trenches, of filtering
out extraneous sounds in acoustical methods for detecting sub-
marines, a long series of experiments carried out for the Navy
on improvements in hot wire valves for the transmission and
detection of wireless signals, experiments on the methods of pro-
tecting airships from lightning, and methods of measuring the
vate of growth and the magnitude of the pressures developed by
high explosives. Members of the laboratory staff and research
students joined the staff at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farn-
borough, H.M.S. Vernon, the Admiralty Experimental Station at
Portsmouth, etc. etc.
Chemical Laboratories, etc.
“The variety of the work undertaken in these and the other
departments, especially that of Chemistry, is indicated in the
following summary of subjects dealt with: the production of
new dyes for panchromatic plates for aeroplane photography; ‘dopes’
for aeroplanes; manufacture of new poison gases and liquids; war-
gas diseases; invention of gas-masks; diagnosis by electrical
methods of nervous injuries ; lice and itch (Army Council Instruc-
tions regarding these pests were largely based on the work done
at Cambridge) ; preservation of fish ; -stage at which cattle should
be slaughtered ; pig-feeding and beef production ; silage ;
aeroplane compasses ; apparatus for timing and dropping bombs;
design and construction of non-rigid airships; azrcraft gunnery;
location of sounds in war; protection of kite balloons against
lightning ; range-finders for Zeppelins and anti-aircraft methods
. -, examination and analysis of water supplies and foodstuffs,
road-making and building material. In the case of the first-
mentioned subject, the Allies were, up to the outbreak of war,
entirely dependent on Germany for ‘photographic sensitisers’ and but
little information about their identity and methods of preparation
was available. Methods of producing all the ordinary sensttising
dye-stuffs were devised in the Cambridge laboratories, and all the
Sensitisers used by the Allies were prepared there.”
10
If we are to realise the seriousness of this scientific contribution,
we must try to imagine what the war would have been like without
poison-gases, without the tank, without efficient aircraft guns,
methods of releasing bombs, photographic apparatus ;—to take
only a few examples.
Trained research students do not drop out of the blue; they
must be provided by centres of scientific learning ; in 1914 what
centres of scientific learning existed, other than the Universities ?
Resistance from this quarter might have meant considerable
dislocation of war operations. But there was no resistance.
The Government was far from under-estimating these services.
“Sir J. J. Thomson and Mr. Horace Davison were among many
distinguished scientists who accepted Mr. Lloyd George’s invita-
tion to assist the inventions branch of the Ministry of Munitions
just constituted.”
(Cambridge Datly News, February, 1916.)
In recognition of his war services, Professor Pope was presented
with the O.B.E. at the end of the war.
Knowledge and Culture in Action.
The scientific workers were not, however, the only brain-
workers whose skill was used for the purpose of war, for the
destruction of human beings. There was no faculty, however
“pure,” however cultural in intention, that was not brought into
action. The British Empire Universities Yearbook and the Royal
Commission take pains to show how the war machine made use
of minds trained in economics, languages, history, religion. The
Empire Handbook notes that pure culture found its appropriate
service on the battlefield rather than in the research departments.
“The younger teachers of literary subjects mostly took ordinary
commissions and were exposed to ordinary risks. Of the historians
alone, seven were killed in action.”
But even literary subjects were “‘adapted for direct war ser-
vices.”
“The General Staff,” the intelligence branches of both Navy
and Army, the Administrative Departments of the Government,
old and new, found among men, and also among women, educated
at Oxford and Cambridge, many who were able to give very
11
valuable help in the conduct of the war, sometimes by their know-
ledge of languages, economics, law or other subjects. Knowledge
of out-of-the-way information, and dialects possessed by individual
members of the University was also discovered and used in many
departments and in the field for the strangest and most important
services, whether of propaganda, censorship, or intelligence.”
(The Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge Universities.)
“Archaeologists with special knowledge of the Greek area
were most useful in helping naval and political work in that region.
Students of economics found scope for their speciality in the
Treasury, the Board of Trade, the financial sides of the Admiralty
and the War Office, and in the Ministry of Munitions.”
(The British Empire Universities Handbook.)
Dr. Holland Rose was employed by the Y.M.C.A. at the French
war bases to lecture to the troops on such subjects as the following :
“How the war came about,” ““Germany’s plans in the East and
how we may defeat them,” “The achievements of France,” etc. ;
and was also made use of at home by a Board whose purpose was
to cover all the English Universities with a series of extension
lectures on the war. Other history lecturers were used for the
same kind of work.
(See Cambridge University Reporter, October 31st, 1917,
Report of the Syndicate by the Secretary for Lec-
tures, etc.)
CAMBRIDGE BRAINS AND WAR BUSINESS.
We have further evidence that Cambridge gave direct help to
the commercial interests involved in the war, and not only to the
machinery by which the war was carried on. It is symptomatic
that in 1919 the three great British oil companies, assisted by Mr.
Deterding, endowed a Chemical School in Cambridge. This action
on the part of great private companies will appear less strange
if we consider a note which appeared in the Cambridge Review of
November llth, 1914: “With a view to helping firms anxious to
avail themselves of the openings for the capture of German
manufactures, the Master of Christ’s has furnished the executive
council of the Entente Trade League with the names of members
of the Staff of the University willing to advise British makers of
certain goods.” There seems to have been at least a brotherly
relation between Cambridge science and war business.
12
The Cambridge Magazine of 1917 pictures for us the effect upon
University life of all this pressing activisation of its permanent
staff. ‘‘It is only fair to add that figures for the Dons (i.e. statistics
of residence) are somewhat fluctuating, and many of them only put
in an appearance for week-ends or even for lectures, so urgently
are their services now required by the Government departments,
which now in so many cases claim their allegiance.”
MORALE.
Cambridge, again, helped to supply the backbone of religion for
the fight. According to the Cambridge Review (1917-18), Cam-
bridge could be relied upon to lend most valuable aid in keeping
up the religious morale of the troops. The Review continually
refers to the Y.M.C.A. hut at the Front, and in the appeal for
Y.M.C.A. lecturers from upper-class families it is given out that
“the mental life of the army in France demands food which the
Universities are best fitted to supply.”
And, more prosaically, the University staked her money in the
war. From time to time we read of sums of money invested by
the University and its Colleges in war stocks and armament firms.
Here are a few examples. The Cambridge Review of March 3rd,
1915, refers to the shares held by Trinity in Messrs. Cammell,
Laird and Co., a munitions firm. On May 3rd, 1916, the Univer-
sity held upwards of £90,000 war stock and £12,000 Treasury Bills.
In June, 1917, after the conversion from 43 per cent. had been
made her holding in 5 per cent. War Loan amounted to £130,000.
When we come to sum up the factors which the University
supplied in the last war—trained soldiers, leadership, technique,
inventions, translators, expert knowledge, administration, morale,
money !—all desperately necessary for the prosecution of a
modern war—vwe are led more and more plainly to the conclusion
not only that the Universities can be used for war, but that if
they resist a war they can very considerably hinder its
progress.
Il. THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND
AND TALK.
“It is a most uncomfortable time for thinking. . . . If they die
to-day you may be quite certain that it is for their faith of to-day.
. . . Let us not forget that it is a question of faiths where logic has
13
always had little tosay. . . . To-day the tempest is around them ;
they cannot answer your appeal. Clear for action! ”’
(M. Chouville, in a reply to M. Romain Rolland,
Cambridge Magazine, Nov. 21st, 1914.)
INFLUENCE OR INSTINCT ?
Perhaps it will be objected at this point that there is nothing
particularly surprising in the transformation of the buildings and
all the technical apparatus of the laboratories into part of the
war machine; that in war time this is inevitable. But what
was not so inevitable, what is more surprising, is the way in
which the overwhelming majority of the staff were swept off their
feet by a wave of senseless and unreasoning Jingoism, the way in
which they eagerly lined up to provide learned and ‘“‘scientific”’
sanctions for the propaganda of lies and hatred with which the
war was conducted. And when H. A. L. Fisher (now Warden of
New College, Oxford) writes: “No measure of compulsion was
needed to bring the Universities into the National Crusade against
the German crime,” or when A. C. Benson adds in the same book,
‘There was no disposition to reason or to argue. It was a question
of instinct and feeling from the start. Even those who had
always hated war went in the end. . . . The simplicity of duty
and the desire to be with the rest,” they are perhaps under-
estimating the part played in this mobilisation of the students by
their own barrage of propaganda.
To the overwhelming majority of the staff there was not the
slightest suspicion that this was anything but a just and necessary
war. Dr. James, in his address on his admission to the office of
Vice-Chancellor, summarises the position :
“The University meets in such circumstances as it has never
known. ... Yet there is no doubt that we are bound to carry
on our work, for by it we can render definite service to the nation.
. . . Our part, while we encourage all of our students who are
capable of doing so to serve their country . . . is to prepare more
men—especially in our medical schools—to keep alive education,
religion, learning, research. Let us confine our controversies
within the narrowest limits.
“T have spoken of the trials. Let me add also that we shall be
better able to bear them not only because our cause is just, but
because we know that the University has contributed a worthy
share of her sons to champion the cause.”
14
In the next year he goes a step further :
“The policy of the University in this crisis has been to render
al employment of its resources, material and intellectual, for the
benefit of the country.”
Many of these resources were mobilised for war work on a
national scale: “Was not Mr. Keynes summoned to London to
advise in the financial crisis? Mr. Tatham is still, we believe,
working at the War Office; Mr. Ralph Butler is acting as inter-
preter with a divisional headquarters staff. Mr. Lucas, Mr. Taylor
and Mr. Aston are working in the aircraft factory, designing, let
us hope, an irresistible super-Zeppelin. Finally, is it not a
pamphlet of two well-known Cambridge scientists, which, printed
in tens of thousands by a grateful Government, is to teach the
men of our Expeditionary Force how to grapple with the prosaic,
but to the troops grimly serious, problem of vermin? And these
are but a few names among many.”
(Cambridge Review, 1914.)
But for those who were not of sufficient importance to be used
for the solution of the prosaic problem of vermin, a use could still
be found at Cambridge in the campaign against the “German
crime.” The powers who made these representative statements
on behalf of the whole University need have had no qualms about
the support they were to have on this issue. True, there were
exceptional cases, particularly towards the end of the war, of
people who made some attempt at an objective analysis of the
war. But for the majority the process was first of all to
line up, and afterwards to find arguments for the reason,
justice and humanity of the war.
MINISTERS OF MORALE.
The University sermons give the most interesting cross-section
of statements concerning the nature and origin of the war by men
who both before and since have been considered as sane and
responsible persons.
Listen to the Rev. C. A. Alington (late Headmaster of Eton):
“When we think of the many bad wars, dynastic or financial, in
which this country has engaged in the past, we can at least thank
God that in our own day and in the greatest war which this
country has ever known, we have said no word and sought no
gain which we should not be glad to answer for in the day of
reckoning.”
(University Sermon, October 25th, 1914.)
15
But if Dr. Alington was prepared to justify the purely spiritual
war of 1914, others could be found to give God's official sanction
to the previous “dynastic or financial’ “bad wars’’ in which
England had been engaged. This is what Dr. J. B. Robinson,
Dean of Wells, said on August 24th, 1914:
“Our fathers trusted in God and He helped them. He was with
them at Trafalgar and Waterloo. Did not the Iron Duke trust
in God and do his duty? Truly God was with our fathers when
our soldiers were dying like flies in the Crimea. Through it all
and out of it in the name of God we became stronger than before.”
Mr. Robinson must have rather curious ideas about God’s
power and about his goodness. But it is very interesting to
compare this confident assumption of divine support with the
prayer used by the German Catholics during the war:
“This is a war for the holiest and highest that a people can
possess, for the very existence of our Fatherland. . . . Almighty
God, for the sake of Jesus Christ Thy Son, spread Thy Almighty
hand over Germany and Austria. ... Holy Michael, patron
saint of the German people, be thou the leader of our armies.
Let all Catholics in Germany and Austria find strength and
courage at this time in Holy Mass.”
It was not sufficient merely to enlist God’s support for the
war. It was necessary also to show that the war was being fought
in order to uphold the Christian technique of warfare. The
Bishop of London, preaching at Great St. Mary’s, said:
“We are fighting for Christian principles as the governing
principles of the world. We were fighting for a Christian conduct
of war against an un-Christian and pagan conduct.”
BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS.
But there were others who were not content to present the war
merely as a disaster in which, however, God and justice had
enlisted for the Allies. There were some who thought that it was
a Judgment sent from God to purge the world for its misbehaviour
and that the final result would be to brighten things up all round.
H. Gresford Jones, M.A., says in the University Sermon on
October 29th, 1916:
“The tremendous catastrophe through which we are passing is
re-awakening the world to the inexorable moral laws of life. Here
before our eyes, naked, colossal, appalling, is Judgment... .
See what it is to which man comes when he has left out God... .
The grandeur of the Atonement—limited, it may be, stifled, it
16
may be, in the close air of the study or classroom—has found its
true glory upon the battlefield. . . . Would that I could convey
to others that fresh access of conviction which has come to me as
I have spoken to soldier after soldier of the Cross of Christ, and the
well-nigh invariable answer has been, ‘Of course there is nothing
but that.’ ... The new world must be the outcome of this
conflict, the partnership of the nations in the one Family of the
Kingdom of God.”
It took more than one man and more than one method to convey
that fresh access of conviction about the glory of God on the battle-
field. But he is supported in several quarters in this interpretation
of war.
F. S. Chavasse, in the University Sermon of May 7th, 1916, said :
“There is no doubt that England greatly needed this revelation
(i.e. the war). Eighteen months ago true patriots were dismayed,
and even appalled, at the serious signs of decay and deterioration
in our national life and character.”
The Venerable A. G. Robinson, too, found that war made life
a lot more interesting :
“Under the stress of war men have become wildly adventurous,
and for the first time they have discovered what it is to live.”
CAMBRIDGE MUST PROTECT CULTURE FROM THE
HUNS.
It is only because the material at our disposal is more compre-
hensive, and not because the role of the other sections of the
University is any less incongruous, that we have made such exten-
sive use of the University Sermons. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
provides us with a gem of objective analysis from the English
faculty. In an address on “The Huns and Literature,” he is
reported as saying :
“The Germans are congenitally unfit to read our poetry; the
very structure of their organs forbids it. . . . The German who
can write even passable English is yet to be found. . . . For them
the great body of our literature was simply the dead possession of
a decadent race. . . for tabulation, not for growth and cultiva-
tion 5
“There can be only one way of exorcising this menace of dusty
historicism—the sword in the hand of the young, who will see to
it that the tumour is cleanly lanced.”
This is a fine example of the good Anglo-Saxon logic that is
opposed to German dusty historicism. “These Huns can’t read
17
our poetry ... they can’t write English . . . what is there for
it but the sword ? ”
Just how willing the Cambridge theorists were to scrap their
pre-war theories and replace them by others of a more patriotic
nature is shown in another case, that of Sir Charles Waldstein,
who before the war had been an enthusiastic Germanophile. This
is an extract from the Cambridge Review of November 15th, 1916:
“‘Aristodemocracy from the Great War back to Moses, Christ
and Plato.
“Sir Charles Waldstein, writing in the first year of the war,
traces its origin to “‘alldeutscher’’ militarism, and finds the under-
lying causes in the inadequacy of German morals. . . . The praise
of Germany in his earlier books as ‘the country of intellectual
depth and sincerity of mind, of thoroughness and spiritualisation
of man’s achievements, of unending perseverance in the fight for
truth,’ sounds a little strange now.”
Sir Charles subsequently changed his name to Walston.
Comic relief is supplied by the Modern Languages faculty :
“Dr. Waterhouse has much to say of the utility of German, but
if pressed he is prepared to advocate the study of it as a dead
language.” (Cambridge Review.)
And a correspondent to the Cambridge Magazine has a bright
idea :
Coir;
“Poetic justice to Rheims is possible. It is well within the
powers of modern builders to transplant hither Cologne Cathedral,
stone by numbered stone.
“Let this be a symbol and monument of our victory.
“Yours, etc., Old Trinity Man.”
For at least one contributor to the Review, war is the main-
spring of all creative activity. E.S.P., in reviewing a book by
L. Haward, writes :
“War and Art can be brought into one bill—but in alliance,
and not in the antagonism in which Mr. Haward prefers to view
them. In their biggest senses they are coincidental expressions
of energy—they ever and anon clean up civilisation, brushing the
caked mud of stagnant rituals. At any rate, we can measure to
this effect the Persian wars on Greek art, and how the civic strifes
of Italy bred Michelangelo. . . . He has nothing at all to say
of architecture, the ‘mistress art’ that has the pulse of war in its
veins.”
18
The last sentence is a pleasant indication of the intellectual
straits to which patriotic theorists were reduced.
But it is not enough simply to theorise about war. The Hun is
at the gate. An elderly senator introduces a note of grim reality :
MSID
“Iam confident that a large number of members of the Univer-
sity who are above military age are asking themselves and one
another what is their duty at this present moment.
“I say emphatically that it is our duty to drill and learn to shoot.
In the worst contingency, the enemy would soon be in our midst.
In the event of invasion, the War Offce may at any moment find
it necessary to raise the age limit, and we older people ought to be
preparing to take our places in the firing line. Someone must take
the lead. Cannot some of those with military experience start
the movement ? “Yours faithfully, Member of the Senate.”
And so, if the worst comes to the worst, the Kaiser will be able
to storm the Senate House only through rivers of professorial blood.
ACADEMIC EXPERIMENTS IN PACIFIST BAITING.
Sometimes this continued childish hysteria produced a reaction.
G. V. Yule, who wrote of an article in the Cambridge Magazine
which criticised the rulers’ part in making the war that it “was
enough to make a decent-minded dog sick,” was not really doing
much to promote the Allied cause. And when at a meeting of
the Wounded Allies Relief Committee, the Venerable Archdeacon
Cunningham described the Union of Democratic Control as silly,
childish and insane, and “Liberals, Socialists and Pacifists as worse
than Jews,” the main result was that 150 members of his audience
left the hall.
Even the poets were mobilised to do their futile bit. One
finds inspiration in a tank. Another writes the following on
Prussia :
“Thy mailed fist the weak struck down,
Now shall the strong do so to thee,
Shatter thy kingdom, break thy crown,
Thy dream of power through victory.
A world in arms now bids thee yield
Thy sword so red with deeds of shame—
That world’s bare word thine only shield,
And deathless horror at thy name.”
But all these tendencies are summarised in a single incident.
19
A gentleman named Professor Ridgeway excluded a fourth-year
student from Newnham from his lectures because she was a member
of the Union of Democratic Control. In a letter supporting his
action the Professor stated that “Newnham was a notorious centre
of pro-German agitation,” that “a member of the Newnham staff,
also notoriously connected with the U.D.C., had recently made a
speech at a public gathering in Newnham. . ., glorifying the Hon.
Bertrand Russell, who had recently been convicted and punished
for seeking to stop recruiting.” In conclusion, he writes: “I
certainly would lose my self-respect if I were to do anything to
help women students who in face of the atrocities wrought and
still being wrought by the Germans upon their sisters in Belgium
and Northern France (worse than the blackest deeds of Alva)
throw all their energies into the defence of Germany and the
injury of their native land.”
(Cambridge Review.)
This is the real expression of the intellectual content of the
philosophies of the armchair fire-eaters of Cambridge. This is
professorial patriotism in practice.
IV. DIE WACHT AM CAM, 1914.
We have seen the whole University complex of buildings,
administration, information sources and scientific apparatus in-
corporated, dissolved into the workings of a war machine. We
have heard University Vice-Chancellors, professors, preachers,
coaxing the students to give themselves up to this machine, to
become its driving power, to line up and fulfil the functions which
no-one else could perform so well.
But why was it possible for this transformation to be so
smooth, swift and effective? Why was there no upheaval,
no hesitation? The University slipped easily into the war, as if
War was a Stage in its natural growth. Looking back, we find that
this was not only due to the “adaptability and suppleness of the
well-trained mind,” to use the apt phrase of the Royal Com-
mission..
If we regard the feverish expenditure of energy in Cambridge
in October, 1914, as a response to a sudden call, as a noble patriotic
gesture, we are very much mistaken. The University, no less than
the British Government itself, was prepared for war.
20
To take a very important example: the war-mindedness of
our University authorities and priests had a pre-war history.
THE PRECIPICE OF THE PINNACLED MIND.
No doubt it is possible to bring forward documents to prove
that war is not part of the education which the University authori-
ties have in mind for students and for themselves. For example,
in 1921 the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University banned the
Oxford. Labour Club on these grounds, “that he wished the
Junior Members of the University to concentrate on the purpose
for which they came to Oxford, namely the study of abstract
subjects.’’
The following is typical of the solemn declarations made by
Cambridge men on becoming Fellows of their Colleges :
“I, N.N., elected a Fellow of this College, do solemnly declare
that I will observe all the Statutes of the College, and will en-
deavour to the utmost of my power to promote the interests of
the College, as a place of education, religion, learning, and
research,’’
(Statutes of King’s College.)
Dr. Mayo, a member of the Senate, insists before the war and
consistently throughout its progress that :
“A great University like Cambridge ought to abstract itself
altogether from questions of peace and war. They ought to
abstract themselves so thoroughly as not to feel dismayed or
elated by anything which occurred in the course of the war.”
(Quotation from a speech by Dr. Mayo in the Senate, May, 1915.)
Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University,
pushes the University even further along the road to abstract and
infinite truth, for he says that ideally it should abstract itself
from questions of education. ‘‘A University exists for the
pursuit of Truth. Students are only incidental.’’
(Speech, quoted in Student Vanguard, June-July, 1933.)
But the corollary of Mr. Butler’s view is very curious : it is this,
that war is an education. ‘‘We are now in another stage of
the education of the world. It has pleased Providence so to
order events that this tremendous happening has taken place,
and those who read history as a movement of intellectual and
21
moral and spiritual force and power towards ends, see in this,
another great step onward in the education of mankind. We see
in it an education of mankind in faith, for faith, and to a new
appreciation of faith.”
(Address delivered by Mr. Butler at the War Dinner in
honour of the Archbishop of York and the Members
of the House of Bishops, April 10th, 1918.)
The doctrine of the abstract purpose of the University has,
indeed, strange bedfellows among the theories of our elders.
This aloof poise, this abstraction from the world, is destined to
give place to nastier things. Perhaps during peace the University
may stand above the world, indifferent to the social purposes of
her students, to their future careers as productive human beings ;
indifferent to life, in fact. But when the call came in 1914 for
students to take gun in hand and fall in with the purposes of
destruction, the University did not rise and proclaim her un-
worldliness. She was immediately wooed and won. She allowed
her academic pretensions, even her academic vows, to be swept
aside overnight.
If we look back on events in their historical perspective, this
precariously disinterested outlook takes on more and more the
appearance of common frivolous ignorance. The questions which
world events put before the University on the outbreak of war in
1914 were rooted in the history of the previous years. University
teachers, with their training and leisure, had less not more excuse
than anyone else to be irresponsible about the forces making for
war in their generation. This easily swayed, irresponsible state
of mind is in itself part of the preparation for war.
OUR PRACTICAL SENATE.
But in 1914 the readiness of University authorities for war was
positive as well as negative. In 1909, military studies as an
alternative subject for the Pass Degree was supported in the
Senate by Mr. Durnford in the following warm terms:
“He could not help thinking it would be the beginning of a
real movement, which was so much desired by those who had
the welfare of the Army and of the country at heart, to encourage
more and more young men from the University to take com-
missions in the Territorial Army.”
An article in the Nineteenth Century of March, 1914, shows us
that in 1913 the question of making military studies compulsory
22
for a degree had been raised in Cambridge. We will quote from
this article, because it has further significance.
“In the spring of 1913, when the deficiencies of the Territorial
Forces had become very obvious, a proposal from Cambridge
attracted considerable attention. It was certainly novel, for it
suggested that the student class, one hitherto exempted by law
or privilege from many ordinary duties of citizenship, should be
called upon to qualify in military training as a condition of obtain-
ing the first University Degree. We feel that the accession to the
Forces of a considerable proportion of men of greater opportunities
and responsibilities would not only give to it additional numerical
strength, but would add to its prestige and draw others into its
ranks” (here follows the detailed outline of a scheme for the
militarisation of the University). We aim at drawing into a
channel of directly national utility much of the superabundant
energy now devoted to the river or the cricket field. A class with
special privileges has also special duties, and we would urge, as
University men, that our class should lead the way in the per-
formance of a national duty. ... If the self-governing bodies
of the University are not prepared to unite in the common
promotion of a more patriotic public opinion in the supreme in-
terest of national defence, they must be content to occupy a place
less prominent in public estimation.
T. F. Huddleston.
C. F. Heycock (King’s College).”
The gentlemen of King’s College who wrote this article believed,
just as the Royal Commission proudly believed, that the training
of the University man for war is not only a military training, but
a training of “class and upbringing.” We will not attempt to
deal with such a serious suggestion, but will confine ourselves to
proofs of more obvious and superficial preparation of human
material.
This article had lively repercussions. In the Cambridge Univer-
sity Reporter of June 8th, 1914, we read that “the following
Members of the Senate among others are in general agreement
with the suggestions on the above subject in the Nineteenth
Century and After of March, 1914, and request that their names
be appended to a Memorial to the Council of the Senate, requesting
them to nominate a Syndicate to consider how best the proposals
in the article may be carried into effect with the approval and
23
= =
——
- - >
= — I
sp amean oae e ite terre
a a e eara =
—
* bad "a, kaa n
em -- d >
= baT T = - as
li i EET “ei aao
— + =
——SS——=—=—_
co-operation of other Universities.” The total number of the
Memorialists, exclusive of the three Members of the Council, was
1,741.
Alas for the furtherance of truth, learning, religion and re-
search! The list of signatures appended includes the Masters
of Trinity, Magdalene, St. Catharine’s, Christ’s, Jesus, Selwyn,
together with several Bishops and Headmasters.
The discussion of this Memorial was cut short by the outbreak
of war and the rushing through of more drastic measures. But
the Masters of Trinity, Magdalene, St. Catharine’s, Christ’s, Jesus,
Selwyn, and the Bishops and the Headmasters need not have been
so anxious. There were other strong-minded people who were
acting while they were talking. The fullest account of war pre-
parations in the University before 1914, which gives due recogni-
tion to responsibility, is to be found in an Editorial in the Cam-
bridge Review of October 14th, 1914:
“One man beyond all others perhaps had a right to be proud,
in that he saw the fruition of a long period of relentless work. It
was clear at last to even those least interested in military matters,
how much Cambridge has owed to Captain Thornton. The
magnificent response to the offer of commissions was in part due
to ordinary patriotic sentiment, but that this response was not
merely the generous impulse of an untrained mob was due to a
man who by his life among us in the last four years has quietly
taught a most unmilitary University that military studies and
military training can command as much attention as sister
sciences and sister sports.”
A PLAN OF ACTION TWO YEARS OLD.
A still more revealing statement is made by the Board of Muli-
tary Studies in their 1916 Report. “On Sunday, 2nd August,
1914, instructions had been received from the War Office bringing
into immediate operation, in view of the national emergency, and
the general mobilisation expected, the scheme which had been
prepared some two years before for the appointment of
Cadets and ex-Cadets of the C.U.O.T.C. and of other members of
the University to commissions in various branches of the service.
In pursuance of this scheme the Secretary of the Board sent out a
circular on 2nd August...”
The scheme which had been prepared two years before !
24
V. PERPETUATING THE FOLLY—CAM-
BRIDGE TO-DAY.
Extract from a letter of Lieut. A. Don, who died May, 1915:
“The greatest trial that this war has brought is that it has
released the old men from all restraining influence and has let
them loose upon the world—the old men are having field days on
their own. Jn our name and for our sakes, they pathetically
imagine that they were doing their very utmost, it would seem,
to perpetuate by their appeals to hate, intolerance, and revenge,
those very follies which have produced the present conflagration.”’
INDIFFERENCE EVEN NOW.
Our University teachers hustled us into the last war not so
much by appeals to hate, intolerance, and revenge, as by making
what we were doing seem full of purpose, by promises of hope
for the future. We were fighting a war to end wars; we were
fighting to save democracy. Very soon after the war it was clear
to us that whatever else we had been fighting for, it was not for
either of these. The thirteen million lives lost in the war were not
a sacrifice, as we are so glibly told every November 11th ; a sacri-
fice implies a loss in the interests of a higher good. But these lives
were merely irretrievably wasted and thrown away. In view of
the growth of Fascism on the Continent and recent measures taken
by our Government it would be laughable to say that democracy
is a greater reality to-day than it was in 1914. And peace is
certainly not nearer; already our armaments are piled higher
than they were in 1914, while the 1935 Air, Army, and Navy
Estimates plan ten million pounds increased expenditure.
Surely our University authorities cannot to-day forget that in
1914 it was their indifference and their persuasiveness which
sent thousands of Cambridge students to lose their lives in a game
which had no part in the betterment of the world. To-day we
might have expected them to acknowledge the mistake which
they made and to refuse to take up their stand on the side of war—
for this is what they are doing when they allow war preparations to
grow within the University. We might have expected them to
give us a lead by throwing their whole influence into resisting war
preparations inside the University.
But at the time of writing, their state of mind must still be
25
counted as part of the preparations for war. They are still in-
different, and could still be swayed. Our historical experience
should make us severely critical of this attitude of innocent and
fatal detatchment. Anyone who has taken the trouble to read
as far as this, will realise that we do not make this criticism for its
own sake.
How are we prepared to-day ?
THE OFFICERS’ TRAINING CORPS.
First in importance is the O.T.C. and its development. The
object of the O.T.C. is stated in the War Office Regulations for all
Officers’ Training Corps, 1925: “The primary object of the O.T.C.
is to provide students at schools and universities with a standard-
ised measure of elementary military training with a view to their
application eventually for commissions in the Militia,
Territorial Army, and the Supplementary Reserve.’’
In 1932 the Government decided it was necessary to improve
on the O.T.C. by a scheme to “earmark potential officers.” The
state of preparedness before the war of 1914 was not good enough
for their present requirements, they said.
“The last war showed that there is a large number of men with
the education and capacity of leadership required of an officer,
but that special arrangements are necessary to earmark
potential officers beforehand so that in a great emergency,
full use can at once be made of all their aptitudes. A
scheme has therefore been introduced for the formation of
an Officers’ Cadet Reserve. Members of the senior division of
the O.T.C. will be invited to register their names as having the
intention, in the event of war, of offering themselves if holding
certificate B for immediate commission, or if holding certificate A,
for training as officers.”
(Army Estimates, 1932, Memorandum of Secretary of
State for War.)
In the same year the University gives its official approval:
“That as a general rule the Commanding Officer of the Officers’
Training Corps should be director in Military Studies,” thus
admitting more openly the Government's full control not only over
the O.T.C. (whose commanding officer is appointed by the Govern-
ment) but over the Military Studies’ Board.
26
THE AIR SQUADRON.
The University Air Squadron is also regarded by the Govern-
ment as a war reserve, as we are officially informed in the Air
Estimates of 1932:
“The Air Squadrons at the Universities of Oxford and Cam-
bridge have as their object the influencing of the flow of
candidates for commissions in the regular Air Force, the
Air Force Reserve, and the Auxiliary Air Force, the stimula-
tion of interest in air matters, and the promotion and maintenance
of a liaison with the Universities in technical and research problems
affecting aviation.” If a University man wishes to learn to fly,
he pays {3 a year and the Government pays the rest.
Big increases in the grants of both departments have been
made in the last few years. Between 1924 and 1932 the fees
for O.T.C. officers increased from £3,400 to £5,900. This year
the War Office has announced that the Air Squadrons in Oxford
and Cambridge are to be enlarged. Cambridge is preparing to do
its bit once more.
RESEARCH.
The record of the last war shows that we must also be on guard
against the use of our laboratories for war research. Let us set
down the facts that have evaded the censorship.
The national perspective of war research—who pays for
research and why?
Research in this country is financed by the State, by industry,
and by endowments. It is carmed out in research stations, both
civil and military, supported by State funds; in industrial
laboratories ; and by research associations using their own labora-
tories or parts of others. Research supported by the State is for
the most part severely practical. In the 1933 Estimates the War
Office, Air Ministry and Admiralty earmarked a total of £931,475
for research, experiment and design ; while in the same year the
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the main depart-
ment for civil research, which was financing work on buildings,
forests, survey, chemistry, fuel and physics, and was granting
£93,500 to research workers and associations, estimated a total
expenditure of only £504,637. Grants which may come to be
applied to research are also made by the Board of Education and
27
various ministries, which still leaves about half the total expendi-
ture of the Government on research to directly military work.
It must also be remembered that much of the Department of
Scientific and Industrial Research would be especially useful in
war time.
Valuable Investments.
Industry not only supports its own laboratories but carries
out research in University laboratories to an extent which a recent
debate in the Senate revealed; and indirectly controls many
University laboratories by endowment. Thus, the Department of
Chemistry in Cambridge has been largely endowed by oil in-
terests -—
‘t... The Department of Chemistry had received the
largest benefaction which had ever been made to it in the
whole of its history. That benefaction had been made by
an oil company which was still carrying on business, and
he was not at all certain that it had not in part been made
because in the period before the war certain discoveries had
been made in the Chemical Laboratories at Cambridge
which became a vital factor in the supply of explosives
during the war.’’
(Report of speech by Prof. T. M. Lowry (Professor of
Physical Chemistry) in the Senate. Cambridge Unt-
versity Reporter, May 15th, 1934, p. 993.)
In the pregnant comment the professor recognises at once the
vital importance of a successful war to the oil company (in 1914
the Admiralty announced their possession of a controlling interest
in the Anglo-Persian Co.: British oil interests in this century
have been involved in a number of other wars), and he recognises
the fact that not only during, but especially before the war, the
Department was engaged in war research. In fact, the directors
of oil companies regard chemical research in general, and the
training of chemists, and the gratitude of the staff of a chemistry
department, as valuable war investments. The announcement
which follows, made fifteen years before, gives a hint of their
enthusiasm in the cause of University science.
“Christ’s College Lodge, May 17th, 1919.
“Endowment of the School of Chemistry.
28
“ The Vice-Chancellor has pleasure in publishing to the Senate
the following portion of a letter he has received from Mr. R. Waley
Cohen :
‘It has been an immense pleasure to me to be able to write to
Professor Pope and tell him that the British oil companies have
agreed to join together in a scheme for endowing a Chemical
School at Cambridge. The Burma Oil Company have agreed to
contnbute £50,000; the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, £50,000 ;
the Anglo-Saxon Oil Company, £50,000 ; and Lord Cowdray and
the Hon. Clive Pearson between them, £50,000, making the total of
£200,000 which is required. Mr. Deterding, who has taken a very
great interest in the scheme from the very beginning, has offered
to make the £200,000 into guineas by adding a personal contribu-
tion of his own of £10,000.’ ”
(Cambridge University Reporter, May 20th, 1919, p. 730.)
The interest of firms which are also vitally interested in war,
in chemists and chemistry, raises the question of what research
can be used for war purposes. The answer is that a very large
proportion of applied research would be useful in war; we can
only consider the more directly useful forms. These will include :—
(1) Work paid for by Air Ministry, War Office, or Admiralty in
whole or part; or work done in any of the numerous
research stations maintained by these ministnes. This will
include :—
(a) Chemical warfare research.
(b) Mechanics and engineering.
(c) Aeronautics.
(d) Explosives.
(e) Metallurgy.
(2) (a) Industrial and agricultural research which makes for
greater self-sufficiency for Great Britain ; e.g. work on
sugar beet or on the production of oil fuel from coal.
(b) National surveys. The coal survey which the Fuel
Research Committee have been carrying out is of a
type similar to one which was first carried out in
1916, when we can be certain that the Government
had no spare energy for new pacific work ; but this is
a More exhaustive survey.
29
(c) Dyestuff and much chemical work. The establish-
ment of an indigenous dye industry was carried out by
means of protective tariffs soon after the war.
(d) Psychology, and Industrial Psychology.
(e) Bacteriology.
The range of research useful to war is immense. We must con-
cern ourselves with directly military work of the first type.
Is war research done in Cambridge ?
That there are loose connexions between war ministries, the
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, research associa-
tions, university laboratories and staffs, and the chemical industry
is well demonstrated. Two examples will suffice :—
In a letter in the Industrial Chemist (December, 1934, p. 507),
signed by W. R. Barclay, consulting metallurgist to the Mond
Nickel Co., Ltd., R. S. Hutton, Goldsmith’s Professor of Metal-
lurgy, Cambridge ; and H. Moore, Director of the British Non-
Ferrous Metals Research Association, reference is made to
“the Committee appointed by the D.S.I.R. to direct the progress
of electro-deposition, which has been carried out at the Research
Department, Woolwich, the University of Sheffield and the
Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough.”
Here is research carried out both in military research stations
and in a University, on the initiative of the Department of Scienti-
fic and Industnal Research, and commented on in patriotic tone
by an employee of a branch of I.C.I. and a Cambridge professor.
Again, in answer to a question in the House, Mr. Duff Cooper
said: “Chemicals required for the testing of respirators” (by The
Chemical Defence Department) “are obtained from the chemical
industry. As I informed the honourable member on the llth
November, it is not in the public interest to disclose further
details.”
The close co-operation between the Chemical Defence Depart-
ment and the “chemical industry,” which he does reveal, is
paralleled by a connexion between that Department and the
Universities; and rounded off by a connexion between the
Universities and the chemical industry.
“The Chemical Defence Research Department consists of head-
quarters in London and establishments at Porton, near Salisbury,
and at Sutton Oak, Lancashire.
30
“It carries out on behalf of the three Service Departments
research and experiments relating to defence against gas, and in
particular investigates methods for the prevention and alleviation
of human and animal suffering which might be caused by gas. ...
“Recourse is also had, where practicable, to the services of
Universities and similar institutions.”
(Army Estimates, 1933, p. 170.)
These objects appear more humane and laudable than credible,
for as the Government experts should very well know, there is no
possibility of passive defence against gas, with incendiary bombs,
etc., for the majority of people, although “gas defence” makes good
war propaganda. In addition, since to test gas masks you must
not only use all known war gases, but all that might be discovered
and used, research must be done towards discovering all possible
new poison gases. In the work of this department, Cambridge
has taken a part.
One of the branches of the department is the Chemical Defence
Committee. Among the merabers of this Committee (1931) were
Professor Barcroft (Professor of Physiology) and Professor Pope
(Professor of Chemistry and the discoverer of the most efficient
method of producing Mustard Gas), and chemical warfare research
has been recently done, and is being done in Cambridge.
On May llth, 1932, replying to a question by Mr. Rhys Davies,
Mr. Duff Cooper said that “certain scientists at the Universities of
Oxford, Cambridge and London carry out experiments on chemical
defence problems, for which payment is made to them from Army
funds.” In the accounts of the Department of Physiology for
1932 there is the item “Contribution towards the expenses of
chemical warfare research—{27 19s. 11d.” This is not a large
sum, but it indicates the degree of co-operation that existed, and
there is a possibility of limitless expansion in time of war. It must
also be remembered that in 1931 Professor Barcroft received,
according to Mr. Duff Cooper’s figures, £407 10s. Od. as honorarium
for serving on the Chemical Defence Committee.
The item did not appear in subsequent accounts, and we have
Mr. Duff Cooper in November, 1932, asserting in the House that
chemical defence research was only being carried out at Oxford
University.
The cessation of chemical research corresponded to the visit to
Cambridge of the German war chemist, Haber.
Chemical research, momentarily discontinued, has reappeared
31
in Cambridge, and there is now a worker in the Chemistry Depart-
ment engaged in poison gas research. Other University military
connexions have continued all the time. The Department of
Physiology at present houses two military officers doing scientific
work. The Department of Engineering received last year £201
from the Air Ministry, and it also receives, of course, payment of
about £3,000 annually from the War Office for training Royal
Engineers.
These are not large items; the majority of laboratories are
innocent of direct military research ; but the liaison between cer-
tain scientific departments, and industrial trusts, and war depart-
ments, can be clearly seen by anyone examining the official
material. Secret research is done, war research is done ; and it is
a small step, as in 1914, to convert the laboratories into research
departments of the War Office.
Conclusion.
We have seen the large proportion of State expenditure
on scientific research which goes to directly military purpose and
the possible military uses of much of the other expenditure.
Further there is definite interconnexion between War Ministries
and Universities, and between both of these and industry. Finally,
war research is carried out in Cambridge.
Two immediate steps could be taken to avert the use of this
University for such purposes. The first is that a statute be
passed enforcing the publication of all research, of whatever kind,
carried out in Cambridge, and the publication of the source of the
research grant. This would involve no difficulty for the pro-social
researcher and should not, as Professor Sir W. Pope argued, in
opposing a recommendation made by the Council that research
should be published, “wound, and arouse a just indignation” in
those “firms and individuals who,” connected with industry,
“had made immense money gifts to the University during the last
twenty years, and had shown great breadth of mind and
vision in the manner of making those gifts.’’
(Cambridge University Reporter, May 15th, 1934, p. 991.)
The second step which is necessary is the establishment of a
solid body of scientific opinion, which refuses to engage in or to
allow free-lance scientists to engage in war research, and whose
organisation extends, from those being trained to research to the
directors of all laboratories.
32
VI. WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
We have seen some of the ways in which the last war was pre-
pared for and carried on in Cambridge, and something of the
effects which it had on the University. From this we can form
some idea of the ways in which the University may be made
use of now and in the future for preparing and carrying on the
next war—and we may try to imagine how much more destructive
of the purposes for which a University exists the next war is
likely to be.
What can we do in Cambridge to prevent the next war? What
could we do, if it had broken out, to bring it to an end as quickly
as possible? To prevent or mitigate its prostitution of science,
culture and thought, and its uncompromising rejection of liberty ?
WHAT DID THEY DO?
Let us see in the first place what was done in these directions
in Cambridge before and during the last war. It would be
natural to suppose that Cambridge, where the capacity for
independent thought has received some cultivation, and where
the materials for forming an independent judgment on the issues
of the war were available to all, would have been to some extent
a centre of opposition to the war. And it is refreshing to be able
to record that there were some Cambridge men who as individuals
made use of their advantages, saw through the all-surrounding
propaganda, and condemned the war, or at least some of its
aspects. By considering what was done by opponents of the last
war, what treatment they received and what effect their opposition
had, we can make the best use of their experience to draw from
it practical lessons for the present and the future. The behaviour
of Cambridge pacifists was, of course, very little different from the
behaviour of pacifists elsewhere.
From well before the beginning of the war, protests were
made against the attempts to force military training on the
University ; and this kind of protest, against injustices and
encroachments of various kinds, lasts throughout the whole
period of the war, and makes up a good proportion of the opposi-
tion to the authorities. The indefatigable Dr. Mayo deserves
honourable mention here. Many who joined in protests of this
kind were not opposed to the war as such.
“We hear suggestions that there is a danger of undue pressure
being brought to bear on ‘‘Freshers’”’ to join the O.T.C. this term.
33
al
We do not really believe that any college authorities will be so
foolish as to jeopardise the chances of producing a really efficient
body of officers by action so illegal and unjustifiable.”
(Cambridge Magazine, October 10th, 1914.)
Thus, the Cambridge University Reporter (June Ist, 1914) reports
a Memorial submitted to the Council by certain resident members
of the Senate expressing the view that it is highly undesirable
that the University should by its own authority require any form
of military service from any of its members. Those who pre-
sented this Memorial added that they did not desire to express
any opinion for or against any general form of national military
service.
At the beginning of the war, the most active organisation
for pacifism was the Society of Friends. They issued several
pamphlets dealing with the question from a broadly religious and
moral standpoint. They do not appear to have received much
publicity in Cambridge. The Cambridge Magazine (November
28th, 1914) quotes a lecture by H. T. Hodgkin (King’s) on ‘‘Chris-
tianity and War” in which he said, “War is contrary to the mind
of Christ and in no circumstances justifiable.” When conscription
was introduced, the Quakers formed the largest section (14 per
cent.) of conscientious objectors ; Congregationalists and Agnostics
formed the next most numerous groups.
(Report on Pacifism and Conscientious Objection, C.U.
Library WRD 34, P363.)
Soon after the outbreak of war was formed the Union of Demo-
cratic Control, which issued a series of pacifist pamphlets contain-
ing constructive proposals for peace with “no annexations,’’ and
kept in touch with pacifist propaganda in other countries. A
branch was formed in Cambridge in January, 1915, and at its
inaugural meeting, 50 new members were enrolled, including
14 Fellows of Trinity (Cambridge Magazine, February 13th, 1915).
At a subsequent meeting Mr. Morel explained “The movement is
not a ‘stop-the-war’ but a ‘stop-the-cause-of-war’ campaign.”
(Cambridge Magazine, March 6th, 1915.)
In October, 1914, when conscription was threatened, the No-
Conscription Fellowship was formed mainly by people who were
also connected with the U.D.C., and by June, 1916, it had enlisted
34
20,000 members. It gave advice as to the best course for con-
scientious objectors to follow, and published facts about the
treatment of prisoners and the behaviour of tribunals. On the
list of the Executive Committee of the National Council Against
Conscription appear the names of Clifford Allen (Peterhouse),
G. F. Shove (King’s) and H. T. Hodgkin (King’s).
Of old Cambridge societies, the “Heretics” continued to meet,
discussing non-controversial subjects. The Union decided not to
divide on controversial subjects, which were however, discussed.
The Liberal Club avoided political subjects in the October term,
1914, but resumed them in the next term, being addressed by
Mr. Ponsonby, who attributed the war to secret diplomacy, and
Mr. Lowes Dickinson, who attributed it to the abstract conception
of the State.
In November, 1915, Clifford Allen (Peterhouse), addressed a
joint meeting of the C.U. Socialist Society and Cambridge I.L.P.
on “Labour and Socialism after the War.”
(Cambridge Review, November 3rd, 1915.)
These or similar bodies must, however, have been active
earlier, since the Socialists are stigmatised as ‘‘worse than Jews,”
along with Liberals and Pacifists, as early as March of that
year, by Archdeacon Cunningham.
(Cambridge Magazine, March 13th, 1915.)
As for the Press in Cambridge, the Cambridge Magazine alone
set out deliberately to give expression to pacifist and other
opposition views. The Cambridge University Reporter naturally
did not exclude matter which fell within its scope, and the Cam-
bridge Review and Cambridge Daily News gave a certain amount
of freedom of expression of opinion in their columns.
Numerous pamphlets and newspaper articles criticising the war,
analysing its causes and advocating measures to prevent or cure
it, appear over the signatures of Cambridge men from the earliest
days of the war. Mr. Bertrand Russell writes in the Labour
Leader :
‘“‘In every nation by secret diplomacy, by co-operation of the Press
with armament manufacturers, by the desire of the rich to distract
the attention of the working-classes from social injustice, suspicion
of other nations is carefully cultivated, until a state of nightmare
terror is produced. . . . If the world is to enjoy a secure peace
when this war is ended ... armaments must be immensely
35
reduced, . . . diplomacy must be conducted publicly and arbitra-
tion treaties must bind nations to seek a peaceful settlement of
their differences . . . none (of these things) will be secured if the
negotiations are left in the hands of the men who made the war.”’
(Reprinted in Cambridge Magazine, October 10th, 1914.)
We may mention also the pamphlets, Workers and War by
Clifford Allen (Peterhouse), describing war as a capitalist concern ;
War the Offspring of Fear by Bertrand Russell (Trinity) ; and The
War and the Way Out by Lowes Dickinson (King’s), criticising the
conduct of English diplomatists as “barren of imagination, of
humanity, of sense of life,” and proposing a permanent European
League who should place their armaments in the hands of an
international authority.
It is worth noticing that speculation and discussion on the
prevention of war was not confined to those who were opposing
the authorities. There were many who held that the war was
justified only in so far as the victors made use of their victory
to inaugurate a reign of international justice and peace. Professor
Pigou made suggestions for lenient terms of peace; the Union
debated “That it is the opinion of this House that in the terms
of peace, Britain should gain not one penny nor one foot of
land” ; Lieut. Baganal wrote to the Cambridge Magazine (Novem-
ber 28th, 1914) to signify his agreement with Romain Rolland,
stating “We are fighting for something more to-day than patriot-
ism—for humanity—fighting, we believe, for the last time.”
On January 28th, 1916, after much opposition mainly from the
Labour Party, the Military Service Act was passed. It came into
force in March. The Military Tribunals started their work, and
especially in the early period were greatly misused. “I learn
from a source that is quite authoritative that Mr. R. H. Wyatt,
of Queen Anne Terrace, who took his B.A. degree last June, was
sentenced with fifteen others to one month’s imprisonment for
refusing to carry out military orders. When he refused to do
work of a military kind in prison, he was placed in a dark cell, fed
on bread and water, and put in irons for a part of each day.
Word has been received that he was to be sent to France on the
8th of May.” (Cambridge Review, May 10th, 1916.) In Cambridge
cases of “serious injustice” occurred in the Local Tribunal sitting
on exemptions from the Military Service Act. A petition to the
Vice-Chancellor is reproduced appealing for exemption for
36
Mr. T. Tindle Anderson who was a conscientious objector to war on
religious grounds.
(Cambridge Magazine, 1916.)
Some tribunals did not consider a man a real conscientious
objector unless he could prove membership of some pacifist
organisation two years previous to the war. Included among
those imprisoned for conscientious objection in 1917 were five
University Socialist Society members. Fifteen University grad-
uates and five undergraduates altogether were imprisoned in
this year for conscientious objection. According to the propor-
tions given in W.R.D. there were over 150 teachers, lecturers,
and students in prison for conscientious objection in March, 1918.
(The material referred to in this and following paragraphs as
W.R.D. consists of a series of pamphlets and reports dealing with
pacifism and conscientious objection in the war, listed under that
heading in the University Library, Cambridge.)
In June, 1916, the Cambridge Magazine notes: “In the mean-
time, arrests proceed slowly, and it is possible that the authorities
are waiting to the end of the term before they accelerate their
activities. It is not part of our programme to incur the
displeasure of the powers that be, and since we understand that
it is illegal to give publicity either to the treatment of objectors
or even to behaviour of tribunals, the Editorial Committee has
no option but to omit from this issue some four pages in which
these matters were to be dealt with.”
The treatment of objectors varied greatly at different camps.
At Wandsworth it was exceptionally bad, and at Shoreham quite
good. The Officer in Command at Shoreham said that he would
send the prisoners back to civil life, but he couldn't.
(W.R.D. 34, 310.)
Inside the cover of a pamphlet on the treatment of conscientious
objectors written by Mr. Crosfield, who had been in prison himself,
was pencilled a list of fifteen University men imprisoned in
Dartmoor in solitary confinement in 1918, five of whom were
Cambridge men, including a Cambridge lecturer in Psychology
and a Wrangler. (W.R.D. 34, 352.) The following shows how
far the victimisation of objectors went. First an individual.
A Quaker writes: “Things are coming near the end this morning.
I was taken up to a quiet place and simply ‘pasted’ until I couldn't
stand and then they took me to the hospital and forcibly fed me.
37
es
5
?
f
. . . The colonel was standing near me and thundered up and
shouted “What! You won’t obey me?’ I quietly answered ‘I
must obey the commands of my God, Sir.’ ‘Damn your God!
Take him to the special room.’ Four of them set on me. One
of them took me by the back of the neck, nearly choking me,
shook me, and dragged me along, while the others pinched and
thumped and kicked me as hard as they knew how. They
banged my head on the floor and the walls, and threw me into a
little cell with thick walls and a small skylight.” Later he was
put on bread and water for three days, and forcibly dragged
through the company drill.
In Broxbourne, conscientious objectors were set to do manure
work. They rose at 4.30. They were all billeted in one room,
which served for eating, dressing and recreation, and their clothes,
which stunk from the work, had to be hung there, too. No
bathing was possible and the latrine, which was in very bad
condition, was in the middle of the dormitory. The Rev. W.
Marwick, of Edinburgh, was told, when inspecting, “that few if
any are able to complete a week’s work.” Dr. J. C. MacCallum,
Medical Officer of Health for Argyllshire, was among those set
to work. (Ernest Hunter of No-Conscription Fellowship in
W.R.D. 34, 352.) Public protests put an end to these excesses.
Of the effects of these tactics we may judge from the following :—
“Less than 4 per cent. of the arrested men have given way before
this treatment; and even in the case of these, their lack of
endurance by no means implies a lack of conscience. The con-
scientious determination of this handful of men has already
thrown the military machine out of gear. Officers are harassed,
discipline is publicly defied, guard rooms are full, a small army of
military escorts and gaolers is employed in looking after the
objectors, and the doctrines of brotherhood, of passive resistance,
of internationalism are being preached and practised everywhere.”
(W.R.D. 34, 310.)
In June, 1916, the case of Rex v. Bertrand Russell came up.
Six men were imprisoned for distributing his leaflet, “Two years’
hard labour for refusing to disobey the dictates of conscience,”
published by the No-Conscription Fellowship and concerned
with the case of Mr. Everett. Bertrand Russell was given a
choice of £100 or 61 days.
(W.R.D. 34, 362.)
38
Ghee M MÁ
This had a sequel in October. “Trinity in Disgrace... . In
our last issue we recorded the fact that the Hon. Bertrand Russell
was fined £100 under the Defence of the Realm Act as the writer
of a leaflet on the case of a conscientious objector. Shortly after
the end of term, the Council of Trinity College refused to allow
Mr. Russell to reside in the college, or to deliver his lectures this
year on Mathematical Logic. Mr. Russell’s Cambridge belongings
were confiscated for sale, and the wherewithal to pay the fine of
£100 being thus provided, their owner was thus, in popular par-
lance, unceremoniously hoofed out! With the further aspects
of the persecution, the refusal of the Foreign Office of a passport
to Mr. Russell to Harvard, where he had been appointed to a
lectureship . . . we are not concerned. . . . What concerns us
in Cambridge is the extraordinary action of the Trinity Council
which, as will be clear from what follows, threatens permanently
to deprive the University of the services of one who is very widely
regarded as the greatest philosopher of modern times.”
(Cambridge Magazine, October, 1916.)
The Cambridge Magazine prints, for the interest of future genera-
tions, the names of the gentlemen who then formed the Trinity
Council. Future generations are likely to remember Russell and
his opposition to the war, when the interest of these gentlemen's
names has departed.
Mr. Russell’s views and activities had raised great controversy
in Cambridge and elsewhere from the beginning of the war. He
had engaged in anti-recruiting propaganda, as a result of which
the authorities eventually forbade him to enter any county
bordering on the sea! (This includes well over half the counties
of England.) During this time, however, Mr. Russell was far from
inactive intellectually, for frequent articles and reviews of books
on mathematical and philosophical subjects by him appear in the
Cambridge Magazine. At the time of his arrest he was “about to
plunge into a new field of philosophical research.”
The other outstanding personality in Cambridge in this fight
against war was Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson. Concentrating rather
on the prevention of another war, than on opposition to the
war that then existed, Mr. Lowes Dickinson discussed in a large
number of pamphlets and books the political origins of the war.
(See Chap. XII and Bibliography of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
by E. M. Forster.) The idea and detailed structure of a League of
Nations was worked out during the war by Lowes Dickinson and
39
other English intellectuals, made use of by President Wilson, and
effectively castrated by Clemenceau and Lloyd George.
It is interesting to consider the position of the Student Chris-
tian Movement during and after the war. (The following state-
ments are based on The Story of the Student Christian Movement
by Tissington Tallow, S.C.M. Press, 1933.) The $.C.M. possessed
international connexions before the war, and a correspondence
was carried on with the German $.C.M. This and subsequent
discussions within the Movement appear to have raised doubts in
some minds as to the sole responsibility of Germany for the war.
For the greater part of the war, disillusionment grew, but the
Movement did not take any independent position. “We are
surrounded by a strange tangle of influences. We hardly know
how much our own will is behind what we believe or how much is
reaction in one direction or another from what is going on around
us.” There was considerable disappointment that no lead was
given to the students by the Churches. ‘‘There was little to
choose between the Churches in Great Britain and in Germany,
and the student class was deeply shocked.”
The S.C.M. continued to hold its holiday conferences, in spite
of criticism, and did much to provide for the relief of refugees.
The final period of the war was one of great disillusionment,
combined with intense interest in social problems, and the years.
immediately after the war saw this interest immensely strength-
ened. Contact with German students during the period of the
blockade made a great impression on the English S.C.M. It
can be said safely that the situation at the beginning of the
last war expressed in the following words, will not be repeated,
“None of the students or secretaries of the Movement paid any
attention to the war-clouds in Europe.”
Let us return for a moment to Cambridge. On Armistice
Day, 1918, the offices of the Cambridge Magazine were wrecked.
The magazine of March 15th, 1919, prints a circular of the C.U.B.C.
protesting against this outrage and against the breaking up af
a debate between the C.U. Socialist Society and the Cambridge
I.L.P. In the next issue, however, Capt. Baynes of the C.U.B.C.
had to justify his circular against an attack from Dr. W. H. D.
Rouse, Headmaster of the Perse School, whom it had bitterly
offended. In Dr. Rouse’s opinion ‘‘Cambridge is no place for
such people as you—nor, indeed, is England. You might feel
more at home in Germany.”
40
WHAT DID THEY ACHIEVE ?
We have seen the different currents of opposition opinion that
existed in Cambridge during the war; democratic, libertarian,
Christian, Radical and Socialist pacifist : we have seen the various
methods of its expression ; in Press, pamphlet and public meeting ;
through conscientious objection, through private and public
protests, through the formation of societies to examine the
causes of war, and work for their removal. We have seen some
of the treatment with which these opponents of war were met.
We have seen something of the effects their opposition had.
In spite of them, the war went on. In spite of them, Cam-
bridge was drawn into the great machine, its educational purposes
completely sacrificed to the business of killing. In spite of them
the peace was a dictated peace, bearing the seeds of future wars.
Nevertheless, it should be clearly recognised that the popular
Opposition to the war in all countries had very great effects.
Without this, the dictatorial behaviour of the militarist authorities
would have been even more blatant, the victors would have
allowed the vanquished an armistice even later, and would have
imposed even more fantastic terms of peace. In Cambridge
itself, too, the voice of opposition compelled some respect from the
authorities.
HOW DID THEY FAIL ?
In what did the weakness of the opposition lie?
First, many conscientious objectors found themselves involved
in fruitless discussions of just what it was that their consciences
objected to. Was this or that work, war work? Through these
discussions they found themselves often divided from their friends
whose consciences drew the line at some different point.
Many, too, were victimised unnecessarily through the lack of
preparation and organisation. And in the sphere of discussion
they were often weakened by their division into numerous sects
which tended to quarrel with one another on the ideal constitution
of the world.
Finally, and most important of all, such opposition as there
was remained from start to finish isolated. In so far as it attracted
a fair amount of attention, in so far as it merely succeeded in
raising in many people’s minds the doubt as to whether this was
really a purely righteous war, it performed a certain service. But
that in itself did not make it an effective opposition to war. Inso
41
far as it remained completely isolated from the mass of the
people, and particularly trom the working classes, it was con-
demned to fertility from the start,
More than sixteen veas have passed since the Armistice. The
evils from which we Were promised release still exist. Every
single one of the causes which have been assigned for the
last war is still in working order. The irresponsibility of the
national sovereign state, secret diplomacy, lack of democratic
control of foreign policy, armament races and armament profits,
the tearing up of international treaties, anti-foreign press propa-
ganda, economic nationalism, the exploitation of subject classes
and subject peoples . . . all these things still exist in 1935. The
nations have learnt to shudder at the prospect of war, but the
rulers of those nations have learnt no lesson from past experience
... except that a different vocabulary is required to-day for
carrying on the good old game.
ACT HERE AND NOW.
Many who take the problem of war seriously and are prepared
to do something to prevent it shrink before the vastness of the
forces they are up against. And they are quite right. Problems
of such size can be solved neither in a hurry, nor by half a dozen
people. But what cannot be done in one go may be achieved
piece-meal, by the co-operation of numbers of different people,
by organised and deliberate action.
The problem of war is a large one precisely because the world
is a large place; and for the same reason there are everywhere
many people who are in various degrees alive to the danger.
Let us begin at home.
And let us begin now, ahead of time. We have rational
minds; let us use them to foresee events and to determine our own
actions in advance. By waiting until catastrophe overtakes us
we shall only condemn ourselves to failure. It is useless to wait
until all are agreed on what precisely are the. basic causes of war,
and what precisely is the ideal form of society. By the time such
agreement is achieved, the dangers themselves will have dis-
appeared or have overwhelmed us. We have enumerated above
eight causes which have been assigned as the fundamental cause
of modem wars, and more could have been added. Prolonged
experience and deep investigations can alone finally decide which
of them does play the most important part. And it is, of course,
42
of the greatest importance to get as full an understanding of the
question as we can. In the meanwhile, however, there can be no
doubt that all of these factors play some part, and that they
are not independent of one another. It is only sane to determine
to resist the operation of all, in so far as we see them actually in
operation, and in so far as we are able to do anything against them.
Let us then get down to brass tacks. Here, in Cambridge, war
preparations are going on. They do not look much, but they are
a beginning. And the last war showed, how swift and easy the
expansion from a small beginning can be: in the official phrase
“a scheme has been prepared.” And in any case, large or small,
what business have they in the University at all? Military pre-
parations are not only not the proper occupation of an
educational institution, they are directly antagonistic to
education. What precisely is the object of the co-operation
between the University and the War Office in the arrangement
of Military Studies? If any one thinks that these “Studies”
are genuine academic studies of the history and principles of war-
fare, he is mistaken. And why does the University make special
arrangement with the Air Ministry in regard to the Air Squadron ?
Because Hydrodynamics is such a fascinating subject? In that
case the University would get considerably greater results if it
encouraged co-operation between the faculties of Mathematics
and Mechanical Sciences, and left the Air Ministry out of the deal.
Just exactly why is it that the laboratories of this University
are sometimes used for the discovery of scientific facts which are
then kept secret? Is this in the interests of the pursuit of know-
ledge and education? Why is it that the sources and magnitudes
of some grants for research work are not ascertainable? No doubt
a good proportion of these grants are from industrial interests
trying to steal a march on their rivals. Even then it does not
appear evident that it is the business of the University to enlist
itself under such service. But if all the research is for purely
industrial purposes, why should it not be published? Then we
would have solid evidence as to the absence of war research in the
University laboratories. Until then. . . well, those who work in
the dark are naturally suspected of having something to hide.
When America declared war on Germany in 1917, the Vice-
Chancellor sent the following telegram to the President of Harvard:
“British Cambridge welcomes American Cambridge as brothers in
arms.” The reply was received : “Harvard glad to fight shoulder
to shoulder with parent University.”
43
We, Cambridge students, call upon the students not only
of Harvard, but throughout the world, to fight shoulder to
Shoulder with us now. Those who fought in the last World
War steeled themselves to its horrors with the thought
that it was the last war. We must make it so. We must
join in a concerted effort to oppose war. We must put our-
selves in a position to understand and react intelligently to
the process of events, instead of being swept away by it.
Every consideration leads back to the same focal point:
Start here, now, on details which seem trivial but which
form the actual material from which a great war is built
up; get together and act in an organised way; join up with
and support every possible ally. Resist preparations for
war inside the University.
(This pamphlet has been written under the auspices and direc-
tion of the Co-ordinating Committee for Research into the Use
of the University for War. The following organisations are
represented on the Committee :—
Cambridge University Anti-War Movement.
Cambridge University Friends Society.
Cambridge University Socialist Soctety.
University Labour Federation.
Cambridge University Labour Club.)
PRINTED BY W. HEFFER & SONS LTD.. CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND
Live Music
Archive
Librivox
Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland
Museum of Art
Internet
Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American
Libraries
TV News
Understanding
9/11